Eight

The Blood of the Covenant

"They're weird," Tsunade commented bluntly as she spun her chair around and stared out the glass window of the Hokage office. Down below, Team Eight walked the path back to the rest of the village after a flawlessly completed B-rank within a few kilometers of Konoha. Kiba was waving his hands dramatically as he explained something while Sakura replied in even words that never forced a shift in her posture. Shino watched on, exasperated, and Akamaru trotted alongside them with a wagging tail and closed snout.

"Tsunade-sama?"

"I heard Kamizuki and Hagane talking the other day," the Godaime continued. "Called that team 'Unlucky Eight.'" She set an elbow on one of the arm rests and dropped her chin in her hand. "They came back from the dead. Sounds pretty damn lucky to me."

"Maybe the name was for the irony?" Shizune suggested as she thumbed through a stack of papers that needed a Seal of Approval. "They're an interesting batch of chuunin—maybe they had some notoriety before you came into office?"

Notorious. She supposed that was one word to describe them, but Tsunade wasn't so sure it was the one she'd use. Notoriety required some sort of fame in the shinobi community and as far as she was concerned, the only time there had been a buzz about them was when the news about them going MIA on their very first mission as chuunin was whispered in hallways and across mission desks. And like all tragedies that befell shinobi, talks about things like that died out after no more than a week. Team Eight had been no different.

Now, if their story had been something along the likes of Uchiha Sasuke defecting to Orochimaru, it would have taken Konoha by storm and every single person from genin to chuunin to jounin would've heard about it.

But Eight wasn't that. Eight was just another pile of paperwork and another few names added to memorial stones and the Death Commemoration, as coarse as it was to admit.

Tsunade's eyes flickered back to the team before they could drift out of sight. Shino with his heavy green jacket, Kiba with his paint-less cheeks, Sakura with her left arm bandaged from the middle of her bicep all the way down to the tips of her fingers.

The prosthesis was new. So new, in fact, that just a few minutes ago was the first she'd ever seen it. Though completely covered without a centimeter poking out from under the tight wrappings, Tsunade's critical eye noted how its size mirrored the right arm and its movements were as fluid and precise as flesh-and-bone.

Konoha General Hospital hadn't provided any experimental prostheses recently, but what she did hear was that the girl had been spending an unusual amount of her time with Suna's Ambassador.

She spun her seat back towards her desk and frowned at the new stack of papers Shizune set in her line of vision. And speaking of hospitals, Shibi's boy had been an enigma. Not only was his entrance exam one of the highest scoring for newly instated medics, but he was proving very quickly that he was one of the most efficient, competent employees Tsunade had seen in a very long time. No-nonsense, keen, and despite his frankly unfortunate bedside manner, he worked with an experienced hand and worked the floor like it was his second nature.

'Experience he shouldn't have if he'd been in prison for a year and a half.'

But then again, he had all those little scars that startled the other medics when they'd completed his physical as part of that T&I screening. Criss-crossing each other in a plethora of lengths and depths, they were everywhere as far as his medical report was concerned. Perhaps he'd gotten practice taking care of those whether they'd been acquired from his time rotating cells or self-inflicted.

Besides his genius, though, came this unexpected penchant for disregarding authority. The first few times it amused her to hear some things he'd done that earned a warning rather than a demerit, like blatantly ignoring the attending head medic's orders or taking up his own duties when none were assigned. He never spoke out of turn or insulted another coworker, but damn was he racking up warning slips in his file. This sort of insubordination, especially for some green-nosed chuunin, would have called for several demerits and a potential firing had he not been so damn good at his job.